Family hopes story of abandonment in hospital will spur action

CRANSTON, R.I. — Steven DiBiasio remembers driving by the now-closed Ladd Center decades ago and thinking: There has to be a better way.

There was.

In moving the final residents of the Exeter center for the developmentally disabled into the community in March 1994, state officials ended a long period of abuse and neglect at what had become a human warehouse. Founded in 1908 as the Rhode Island School for the Feeble-Minded, an alternative to the savages of poor farms and prisons, Ladd went into the history books as the result of a federal lawsuit, tireless advocacy, and Providence Journal investigations dating to the 1950s. (Story and photos)

"We jump to 2016 and now our most vulnerable population is integrated in society and this is so welcome," DiBiasio said. "On some levels, though, society is still not ready."

The broken promise of 1994 and continuing isolation of some people prompted the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to determine that Rhode Island had grossly violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. In a 2014 consent decree, the state agreed to correct the violations.

And it was in that spirit, DiBiasio said, that he and his wife, Jo-Ann, challenged the James L. Maher’s treatment of their daughter Christine — and opened themselves to The Providence Journal.

"It is my hope that sharing our story will prevent what happened to Christine from happening to any adult or child with developmental disabilities," he said. "An agency that is receiving funding to provide care for our society’s most fragile population cannot pick and choose which regulations they wish to follow."